RICHMOND, Va. -- If Roger Zygmunt Comte de la Burdé had
been found dead in his Jaguar or Mercedes-Benz downtown on Broad
Street, David M. Riley, a senior special agent of the Virginia State
Police, said "the
whole world would have been a suspect."

There were the victims of his shady art and real estate deals
as detailed in court records. There were his enemies, whether real or
perceived, at his former employer, Philip Morris. There were his many
women, including an ex-wife, a lover and a married biochemist who was
carrying his baby,
not to mention the woman's disapproving husband.

But Mr. de la Burdé, a 60-year-old Polish
émigré, tobacco research scientist and collector of
African art whose pedigree was as suspect as the paintings he aged in
the rain on his roof, did not die on
the streets of Richmond. He died at Windsor, his 220-acre estate, under
circumstances
that greatly narrowed the list of possible suspects. He died on a couch
in
his library with a bullet in the head from his own revolver.

Although the case is under judicial review, the violent end of
the enigmatic Mr. de la Burdé seems as much a riddle as ever.
Was it murder? Or was it suicide?

If it was murder, a murder
driven by jealousy and greed as a jury concluded, the killer, to the
satisfaction of Mr. Riley, is serving 22 years in the Pocahontas
Correctional Center in Chesterfield.

If it was suicide, the same prisoner -- Beverly Anne
Monroe, an organic chemist and mother of three who ended her marriage
for Mr. de la
Burdé and became his companion for 12 years -- is a victim of a
miscarriage
of justice stemming from admissions coerced by Mr. Riley.

Now, years after the 1992 shooting and trial, a judicial
ruling on
an appeal by Mrs. Monroe's family has renewed interest in the case.
Last April,
a federal judge in Richmond, Richard L. Williams, questioned whether
her
conviction had been justified and he has given the defense an
opportunity to present evidence questioning whether prosecutors had
established her
guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and whether her constitutional rights
to
counsel had been violated. The findings could come sometime this
year.

From the beginning, Mrs. Monroe put herself at the setting of
her lover's death. She said they had dinner, worked on an art book
manuscript and kissed goodbye shortly before he took his life in
despair over failing health and other problems.

Mr. Riley focused quickly on Mrs. Monroe in what he believed
was a murder and, after she failed a polygraph examination, presented
her with his idea of what happened: that she had been present at the
shooting but had
blocked it from her mind. Eventually, she agreed with him, and
prosecutors then charged her with murder, although no forensic evidence
tied her to the shooting and although she had an alibi.

"I did not kill Roger," Mrs. Monroe, 62, said in a recent
prison interview, restating an innocence she has maintained over the
years. "I loved Roger."

Her supporters, led by a daughter who has devoted her legal
career to vindicating her mother, include Richard A. Leo, a professor
of criminology and psychology at the University of California at Irvine
and a specialist in police interrogations, confessions and wrongful
convictions.

"It's one of the most outrageous cases I've ever seen," said
Mr. Leo, accusing Mr. Riley of crossing the line from permissible
police deception into illegal intimidation.

Mr. Leo characterized Mrs. Monroe as someone who begins "to
imagine they could have done it."

Mr. Riley said he was precluded from discussing the case but
offered no apologies for the conviction of a defendant he has portrayed
as a clever actress who, when shortchanged in Mr. de la Burdé's
will and spurned for a pregnant rival, turned to murder.

Much of the testimony concerned the convoluted doings of Mr.
de la
Burdé, a man consumed by art, music, science, business and
romance.

He had boasted that he was the descendant of a royal overseer
of tradesmen in 14th-century Paris, but The Richmond Times-Dispatch
uncovered discrepancies in his claim. He also said that he had fled
Poland in the 1950's and married a West German pediatrician and that
they had two daughters. He eventually settled in Richmond where a
background in organic chemistry landed him a research job with Philip
Morris in 1961. He would stay with the company until 1987.

From 1968 to 1969, Mr. de la Burdé also served as a
United Nations technical adviser to Nigeria, where he acquired tribal
sculpture which
he later claimed to a writer for the journal "African Arts" had been
collected
by his father before World War I. A curator for the Metropolitan Museum
of
Art, Susan Vogel, later found evidence contradicting the claim.

All the while, witnesses testified, he was trading in suspect
art. A stone carver, Frank Vegas, said he was employed to produce fakes
of well-known sculptures which Mr. de la Burdé then donated as
originals to Radford University, the alma mater of a daughter, Corinna.
The Federal Bureau of
Investigation confirmed there had been an investigation but said it was
dropped
after Mr. de la Burdé's death.

Beverly Monroe, meanwhile, had grown up on a farm in South
Carolina and obtained a degree in organic chemistry. She married a
scientist and
had two daughters and a son.

In late 1979, Mrs. Monroe was hired by Philip Morris to work
in the
patents department. She soon met Mr. de la Burdé, and they began
an
affair. She and her husband, Stuart, separated in 1981, and Mr. de la
Burdé and his wife, Brigette, split up not long after.

At Philip Morris, Mr. de la Burdé had developed a
carbon dioxide
process to expand tobacco which the company acknowledged saved about
$300
million from 1979 and 1985.

Saying he was cheated out of promised rewards, Mr. de la
Burdé sued, and Philip Morris countersued, accusing him with
threatening to disclose "certain confidential information and
documents." The lawsuit was settled with a payment to his estate and a
return of documents after his death.

In his last years, meanwhile, court testimony established, Mr.
de la Burdé had affairs with co-workers and a married
biochemist, Krystyna Drewnowska. Consumed by a desire for a male heir,
he contracted with Mrs. Drewnowska for a child. Mrs. Monroe, learning
of the arrangement, informed Mr. Drewnowska's husband, Wojtek. Mrs.
Drewnowska gave birth to a daughter.

Prosecutors seeking to show that Mrs. Monroe was angry enough
to kill later produced a letter, written in 1990, in which she berated
Mr. de la Burdé for his unfaithfulness.

On the evening of March 4, 1992, as Mrs. Monroe told it, she
left Windsor about 9:30 p.m. and drove home, stopping for gas. Arriving
about 10
p.m., she said, she talked to her son, Gavin, and then drove to a
Safeway store. She said she tried to call Mr. de la Burdé but he
did not answer.

The next morning, she said, she stopped by Windsor, where she
and the caretaker found Mr. de la Burdé on a couch, a
.38-caliber Smith & Wesson gun in his right hand and a bullet wound
above his right eye. In checking for a pulse, the caretaker later
recalled, he may have dislodged the gun.

The death scene compromised in other ways, police witnesses
conceded.

Mrs. Monroe told investigators that Mr. de la Burdé had
been depressed. But other witnesses insisted that he had been making
plans --
including a sexual threesome for later that week -- and that jealousy
had
unhinged Mrs. Monroe.

Mr. Riley quickly focused on Mrs. Monroe, suspecting that
although no fingerprints or other forensic evidence tied her to the
shooting, she had
wielded the gun and then planted it in Mr. de la Burdé's
hand.

Mr. Riley remained skeptical of her claim -- which was
supported by a Safeway receipt stamped 10:40 p.m., around the time Mr.
de la Burdé was first believed to have died, and a canceled
check to the store -- that she had left Mr. de la Burdé alive,
since, he made a telephone call around 10 p.m. Later an eyewitness from
the store came forward. Prosecutors countered that Mrs. Monroe could
have returned to Windsor.

Three weeks after the death, Mr. Riley asked Mrs. Monroe to
take a polygraph examination.

Mrs. Monroe waived her right to a lawyer.

"I know it was naïve and stupid," she said in an
interview. But she said she had been taught to cooperate with the
police and felt she had nothing to hide.

Mrs. Monroe was told that her responses had indicated that she
was not telling the truth. Then Mr. Riley pressed her to acknowledge
that she might have been present when Mr. de la Burdé shot
himself.

Because, as Mr. Riley later testified, he had forgotten to
restart the tape recorder, most of Mrs. Monroe's responses were not
recorded.

Police witnesses later testified that Mrs. Monroe acknowledged
being present, but Mr. Riley was unable to get her to say that on tape
after restarting the machine.

Amid prosecution pressure to solve the case, Mr. Riley
testified that he arranged to meet Mrs. Monroe again on June 3,
1992.

Again, the exchange was not taped. But at the end, after an
encounter Mrs. Monroe later portrayed as intimidating and Mr. Riley as
congenial,
he wrote a series of statements to which Mrs. Monroe put her signature.
They began: "I was on the sofa. Roger was on the other sofa. A noise
made me jump. I don't recall getting up. I recall standing over Roger
who was on the sofa and seeing the gun."

But then the statements veered into the hypothetical: "The
above I remember clearly but I don't remember exactly what happened
next, but I do know that having seen Roger in that circumstance my
natural reaction would be (not knowing whether he was alive or dead at
that instant) to try to stop him and that reaction would have been to
try to take the gun away from him.

"My next reaction would be (upon realizing he was dead) to put
back the gun. It would be natural to have put the gun back where I
thought it
had been or where it would appear it should have been considering the
position of his body. It would have been natural for anyone realizing
they shouldn't have touched the gun to have wiped it off before putting
it back."

The jury took only two hours and 55 minutes to find Mrs.
Monroe guilty.
She posted bail to remain free during appeal but in March 1996 began
serving
her 22-year sentence.

Last April, Judge Williams granted defense depositions on six
issues, including whether prosecutors relied on statements by Mrs.
Monroe that were involuntary and in violation of her constitutional
rights and whether prosecutors erred in failing to disclose a witness
who saw a black Bronco speeding out of Windsor's driveway the night of
the death.

"In general the court is impressed with the substance of many
of Monroe's claims," Judge Williams wrote.